Don DeLillo Book order (chronological)

This first volume in the Library of America Don DeLillo edition features three essential novels from the 1980s, each accompanied by new prefaces from the author. In The Names (1982), DeLillo's breakthrough work, James Axton, a risk analyst, investigates ritual murders linked to a cult fascinated by ancient languages, leading to profound reflections on identity, disconnection, and language. White Noise (1985), a blend of campus satire and midlife character study, presents a darkly humorous portrayal of postmodern America, where brand names infiltrate daily life and individuals are reduced to their data. Libra (1988) serves as a counter-history of the JFK assassination, offering a nuanced view of Lee Harvey Oswald and exploring the complexities of historical narratives. DeLillo notes that the novel, while rooted in history, also seeks to clarify and balance it. The volume includes two rare essays: "American Blood," a 1983 Rolling Stone article addressing the JFK assassination and its surrounding speculation, and "Silhouette City," which examines extremist right-wing groups and the rise of neo-Nazism in the U.S. Together, these works showcase DeLillo's incisive exploration of contemporary themes.

A rich parody of the parallels between the jargon of football and the jargon of battle - and a touch of cold-war existentialism - makes this powerful novel as hilarious as it is relevant.

"It is Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor and her husband and her former student waiting for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon to Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity. Then something happens and the digital connections that have transformed our lives are severed"--Publisher.

'Think of two parallel lines. One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self.' A troubled adolescent endlessly riding New York's subway cars, Lee Harvey Oswald enters adulthood believing himself to be an agent of history. This makes him fair game to a pair of discontented CIA operatives convinced that a failed attempt on the life of the US president will force the nation to tackle the threat of communism head on. Libra is a gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, laying bare the wounded American psyche and the dark events that still torment it. 'An audacious blend of fiction and fact' The Times

Jeffrey Lockhart's father, Ross, is a billionaire with a younger wife, Artis, whose health is failing. Ross is the primary investor in a secret compound where death is controlled until new technologies will offer to return the patients to life. Jeffrey grapples with Artis's choice to enter the compound, instead of embracing the life she has left.

This is Don DeLillo's first collection of short stories, written between 1979 and 2011; in it he represents the wide range of human experience in contemporary America - and forces us to confront the uncomfortable shadows lurking in the background. His characters are plagued by their own deep, often unconscious, longings; they are subjected to shocking violations, exposed to unexpected acts of terror. No matter whether he is focused upon the slums of New York or astronauts in orbit around the Earth, DeLillo chooses never to turn away from the unsettling manner in which humans are brought together. These nine stories describe the extraordinary journey of a great American writer who changed the literary landscape. 'Don DeLillo's richly compressed short stories are the work of a true master . . . In these stories or lucid dreams - sometimes drily shocking or mournfully funny, always masterfully designed - DeLillo himself isolates that stray thought, and makes of it great art.' Guardian

In this potent and beautiful novel, the writer The New York Times calls "prophetic about twenty-first-century America" looks into the mind and heart of a scholar who was recruited to help the military conceptualize the war. Richard Elster is at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker and by Elster's daughter Jessica—an "otherworldly" woman from New York. The three of them build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event turns detachment into colossal grief, and it is a human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

Falling Man is a magnificent, essential novel about the event that defines turn-of-the-century America. It begins in the smoke and ash of the burning towers and tracks the aftermath of this global tremor in the intimate lives of a few people. First there is Keith, walking out of the rubble into a life that he'd always imagined belonged to everyone but him. Then Lianne, his estranged wife, memory-haunted, trying to reconcile two versions of the same shadowy man. And their small son Justin, standing at the window, scanning the sky for more planes. These are lives choreographed by loss, grief and the enormous force of history. Brave and brilliant, Falling Man traces the way the events of September 11 have reconfigured our emotional landscape, our memory and our perception of the world. It is cathartic, beautiful, heartbreaking

Een Amerikaan in Griekenland raakt geïnteresseerd in een geheimzinnige sekte die rituele moorden pleegt.